


The Art of Sleeping With

by prosopopeya



Category: Glee, Spring Awakening - Sheik/Sater
Genre: Alternate Universe, Bisexuality, Crossover, M/M, Sexual Identity, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-21
Updated: 2012-05-21
Packaged: 2017-11-05 19:36:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/410228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prosopopeya/pseuds/prosopopeya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Reimagining two scenes scenes from Spring Awakening. Starring Blaine Anderson as Melchior Gabor, Mike Chang as Moritz Stiefel, and Kurt Hummel as Wendla Bergman.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Art of Sleeping With

**Author's Note:**

  * For [msmoocow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/msmoocow/gifts).



_Shame._

Blaine pauses to set the end of his pencil against his lips, and he stares at the word on the page; he’d put it down there to focus his thoughts, which are scattered mainly because of how strongly he feels about this. It’s hard to swim through the sea of passionate thoughts in his head to pick out just the right phrasing for this, and it’s all too important that he figures it out just right. Maybe if he gets it just right, whoever hears this, whoever reads it, will be convinced.

_What is its origin ~~? A~~ and why are we hounded by its miserable shadow? Do male penguins feel shame when they raise a chick together? Does the chick’s morals suffer from being raised by a same-sex couple?_

He stops again and sits back in his chair; he bounces his knee under the table, bounces it until his shoe slides against the floor, and it can’t bounce anymore. 

_Is there anything so fundamentally different between a gay couple and a straight couple, other than a lack of rights? In my opinion, gay marriage is a civil rights issue._

Blaine screws up his face and sinks back in his chair; he’s not sure the penguin metaphor works, or if the word ‘penguin’ just makes anything inherently funny. He lets his eyes wander off to the far corner of the room. Inspiration might come if he just closes his eyes and waits for it, and he tries not to think too hard about anything, in the hopes that another idea will drift into his mind. Maybe something about how everyone ignores all that stuff in Leviticus now -- 

Before it gets a chance, his mother calls up the stairs.

“Blaine! Mike Chang to see you!”

In another second, Mike glides through the door to Blaine’s room, and he nearly trips over a chair, but he catches himself mid-fall and turns around twice before he finally catches his balance.

“Mike?” Blaine grins at him from his seat, having witnessed this graceful display of lack of coordination. 

“Sorry I’m late. I set my alarm for two, but I just kept hitting snooze. I ran so fast to get here I feel like my legs are going to fall off.” Mike leans against Blaine’s dresser, and sure enough, Blaine can just make out the sheen of sweat on his forehead.

“You slept all day?” Blaine doesn’t really judge, but it’s not like Mike; usually he’s so worried about his grades that he tries to keep a regular sleep schedule.

Mike’s head drops until his eyes can bore into Blaine’s.

“Dude. I was up until three in the morning reading those pamphlets you gave me until I couldn’t see straight.”

Blaine’s lips twitch at the corners. “That’s sort of the point.”

“Blaine!” Mike darts a glance at the door; he’d said that a little too loudly. “I can’t think about _anything else_. Maybe it’s just the sleep thing, but... I hear, and see, and feel just like normal, but everything seems so... strange.”

“Hey -- hey. Sit down. Breathe.” 

Blaine turns his desk chair around, and Mike sinks onto the foot of his bed. He leans over and takes one of Mike’s hands, and if Mike’s eyes snap up to focus on Blaine’s -- if his pulse quickens -- Blaine assumes it’s all because of Mike’s general agitated state.

“Did the illustrated guide help? That one answered some questions that I had.” He speaks slowly and calmly, like talking to a spooked animal; Mike pulls his hand away.

“Um, _no_. All that did was give my _dreams_ a more informed guide.” 

He scoffs and scoots himself back a little on Blaine’s bed, and his eyes fall away to the floor. Blaine gives him a comforting smile, waiting for him to find his words.

“I just don’t get it,” Mike says finally, softly. “You’ve never been with a guy, Blaine. How do you know what it feels like to... do that -- to do _anything_ with another guy?”

This is actually a sensitive point for Blaine -- he’ll find someone eventually, right? -- but he feels confident that he can answer, anyway. He’s thought about this enough; he’s sought out enough information, enough _porn_ to be able to answer this confidently. 

"Giving yourself over to someone else? Defending yourself until finally you surrender and feel Heaven break over you?" 

Mike’s eyes are on him, wide and uncertain and soft, and Blaine resists the urge to take his hand again.

“I just put myself there...” He closes his eyes and leans back in his chair, letting his body relax. “And imagine.”

Mike’s throat audibly clicks.

“You just... put yourself there... and imagine,” he says slowly, and Blaine opens his eyes to give him a bright, encouraging smile.

“That’s right.

Mike pushes himself to his feet and crosses Blaine’s room to the window, and he shoves his hands in his pockets.

“Still, I just can’t... How can you _know_ that this is something you want if you’ve never had it? Shit -- ” Mike whirls around, and he holds his hands up. Blaine’s face is already an icy mask. “Not that I’m saying you can’t know that you’re gay if you’re not with a guy, I’m just saying -- how can _I_ know that I’m _bi_ if I haven’t been with anyone?”

Blaine tries to school his anger into something more appropriate for his frazzled friend; after all, sometimes internal homophobia is the last frontier.

“I don’t see how it’s any different, Mike. When you think about kissing boys -- when you think about _being_ with a boy, even without all the nudity...” He trails off to make sure Mike is with him, and Mike nods, transfixed, presumably on the mental image Blaine is trying to paint for him. “Do you want it the same way you would want that with a girl? Does it grab you -- either here,” Blaine touches his chest, “or here?” And a smile touches his mouth as he hovers his hand over his crotch.

Mike’s eyes follow Blaine’s hand, and Blaine has the unique experience of watching MIke apparently fall apart. First he clenches his jaw, then he tears his eyes away, then he bounces on his heels, and then he jerks his attention back to Blaine as he starts backing toward the door.

“I just realized -- I never had breakfast. I mean dinner, it’s dinner by now, and if I’m not home for dinner my parents are going to... I have to go.”

Mike disappears out the door in a flurry of gracefully tangled limbs, and he thuds down the stairs so fast Blaine almost can’t hear the time between his footsteps. Blaine shakes his head and turns his chair back around, and even though his best friend is clearly in the middle of a rocky journey to self-discovery, he can’t help but smile a little. Mike will figure it out. He’ll find a guy to try out his newfound feelings on, and he’ll figure himself out. Blaine’s sure of it.

*** * ***

“Blaine? Blaine Warbler?”

He picks his head up out of its book and finds Kurt Hummel, the boy who had been his neighbor when they were kids, but then his mom had gotten sick, and they’d moved away, and when you’re eight “keep in touch” really isn’t much more than something you abbreviate in someone’s yearbook. He recognizes him instantly, and it isn’t just about seeing how that eight year old grew up into this handsome teenager. There’s something else that clicks into place when he sets eyes on Kurt.

“It’s Anderson,” Blaine says with a smile, but he finds the mistake charming, and even more charming is the flush in Kurt’s cheeks. 

“Oh, right. Warbler was your -- Because you married your -- ”

“Pet bird, yeah.” Blaine grins, not exactly embarrassed, because Kurt had officiated the ceremony, so he’s complicit in Blaine’s six-month-long insistence that his last name be Warbler. He shakes his head, shaking away the past to better focus on the present.

“What are you doing here? Are you by yourself?”

The coffeeshop is pretty quiet, and it’s just the two of them and someone off in the corner on their computer, but they’ve been there for hours, like Blaine himself.

“Yeah, I just -- I’m on a coffee run.” He pushes a smile onto his face, but there’s something breathless in his voice that’s contagious; Blaine can feel it in his own chest when he looks up into Kurt’s eyes. “What about you?”

“I come here sometimes when I need to think, or when I’m trying to write.”

“Oh!” Kurt’s eyes fall on Blaine’s notebook, and Blaine realizes it’s the first time since Kurt’s walked up that they’ve taken their eyes off each other. Kurt steps back and raises his hand. “Oh, if you’re working, I won’t bother you -- ”

“No,” Blaine finds himself saying before he even thinks about it, and he half rises to make Kurt stop. “No -- it’s okay.” Recovering, he tries to play that off as he gestures to the empty seat. “Please, have a seat.”

Kurt sinks down, dropping his bag at his feet, and he cups his coffee with both hands. Their eyes touch again, and it’s just as electric -- maybe more so -- than the first time on the stairwell.

“How have you been?” Blaine has to force the words out around the desire to just _stare_. “Did you move back here?”

“Just a few weeks ago.” Kurt lets out a breath, and Blaine wonders if he’s been holding it, or if he just feel as kicked in the chest as he does. “My dad got remarried.”

“Oh really? That’s great -- that’s great, right?” Blaine frowns, looking for signs of discontent, but Kurt waves a hand.

“That’s great,” he confirms with a nod, and Blaine’s smile returns like a float bobbing back to the surface.

“Well... Great.” 

Kurt laughs, but it’s more of a breath, and Blaine does too; he clicks his pen twice before he puts it away by the edge of his notebook. There’s a silence that neither one of them knows how to fill just yet, but in a way it’s good; Blaine feels like Kurt came and knocked him to pieces, and he could use a second to get himself back together. 

“Oh.” Blaine points to a button on Kurt’s bag. “Are you in a GSA?” 

Kurt glances down and comes up blushing. “I was, at my old school. Are you...?”

“I’m the president,” he answers quickly, and Kurt’s eyebrows lift.

“Well. There you go.” He laughs, but it’s awkward, and he quickly brings his coffee to his lips.

“This weekend we’re having a -- We’re going to have a sleepover at my friend Mercedes’s house, and we’re all going to send emails and call our senators about how gay marriage is important to us. I’m working on something we can send, sort of a form letter. You could come if you want.” 

He’s already blurted it out before he thinks about how weird it is to invite someone he hasn’t seen in years over to a stranger’s house for political activism, but it’s too late now, and Kurt’s still smiling at him. That smile is dazzling.

He closes his eyes because he can’t think so long as he’s looking at Kurt like that, and he presses his fingers to the bridge of his nose, hoping to pinch some sense back into his head.

“I’m sorry -- that probably sounds really awkward and boring.” He drops his hand, and whatever sense he managed to gain disappears again. “I just... I missed you, Kurt.”

Kurt sucks in a breath, and he loses that smile, but that actually isn’t an improvement; now he just looks as captivated as Blaine feels.

“I missed you too,” he whispers.

Blaine’s phone on the table vibrates, and it’s close enough to the edge that it falls off; both he and Kurt start for it, but Kurt reaches it first, and all Blaine grabs is Kurt’s hand. They’re still half leaning out of their chairs when they freeze, and Blaine’s phone vibrates two more times before it stills.

“Sorry,” Kurt says quickly.

”It’s okay.”

Kurt sits up, and Blaine follows, mostly because he’s still holding onto Kurt’s hand. Kurt smiles, presses his lips together, ducks his head, and Blaine watches every movement until Kurt nods at his hand.

“I will need that back when you’re done.”

“Oh -- sorry.” Blaine flushes and pulls his hand back, and Kurt shakes his head.

“It’s okay.”

Their eyes meet again, and Blaine couldn’t say if it’s ten seconds or ten minutes (but probably more the former) before Kurt’s phone beeps, and he pulls it out of his pocket.

“I should go; my dad, he’s unpacking, and I shouldn’t abandon him for too long.”

Kurt stands up and pulls his bag over his shoulder, and Blaine picks up his phone.

“Wait -- let me have your number. I’ll text you; we’ll set something up, get coffee for real.” Blaine’s heart is in his throat for the three seconds it takes before Kurt nods and gives Blaine his number.

“Text me yours. This weekend -- after your political activism, we should... catch up.” He’s still blushing, and later Blaine won’t be able to pinpoint a time in which Kurt actually stopped.

Blaine nods, and Kurt grins, and he waves at Blaine; he takes five steps before he remembers his coffee and turns back around to pick it up.

“Bye again.”

Blaine waves and watches Kurt disappear out the door; he takes a deep breath as the door jangles shut, and it seems as if he hasn’t actually breathed since he looked up and saw Kurt standing next to him. It’s silly -- it’s _ridiculous_ \-- but he wonders if that moment of recognition, that click when he saw Kurt standing next to him was his heart, his _soul_ saying... _oh there you are_.


End file.
